


Babelfish

by Black_Crystal_Dragon



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Background Relationships, Comedy, During Canon, Gen, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy References, Humor, Ianto Jones appreciation, M/M, The Hub (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-18
Updated: 2009-02-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 19:57:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Crystal_Dragon/pseuds/Black_Crystal_Dragon
Summary: The Babelfish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe – and one has dropped through the Rift, right into the middle of the Hub …





	Babelfish

**Author's Note:**

> This was written during a Doctor Who/Torchwood themed "road-trip" style holiday to London and Cardiff at the behest of scripteens, whose idea it was in the first place and who was at the time able to write down the entire Babelfish Argument, word-for-word, from memory. Set some time during the early part of Series 2.
> 
> Hover over the German text for translations, or see the end note.
> 
> Archived to AO3 on 19 April 2018, with a small amount of editing.

It was Myfanwy’s second screech that caught Ianto’s attention. The occasional shriek was normal, but the pterodactyl was usually only this vocal at feeding time. He was surprised to find her crouching on one of the bridges over the pool at the base of the tower, her wings outstretched for balance, stabbing her beak into the shallow water. He looked around; Toshiko was welding two pieces of alien technology back together, her ears protected by thick plugs, and so had not heard the commotion. He waved to get her attention, then pointed out the pterodactyl’s strange behaviour before walking over to take a closer look. Toshiko took off her welding mask, set down her tools and followed him.

Myfanwy screeched again, and Owen poked his head out of the autopsy bay. “Can someone shut that thing up? Some of us are trying to concentrate!”

Ianto shushed him, now only a few feet away from the tip of Myfanwy’s wing. He crouched down by the bridge and peered into the water, trying to see what had caught her attention. Toshiko leant over the railing, and when Ianto hissed, “Look!” even Owen’s curiosity got the better of him.

Something small, yellow and leech-like was swimming around in spirals, trying to avoid Myfanwy’s stabbing beak. Owen ducked under the railing next to Toshiko for a closer look. “What the hell is it?”

He leaned out over the water as far as possible for a better look and Myfanwy started snapping at him, thinking he was muscling in on her prey.

“I don’t know, but don’t you think we should call the pterodactyl off before it gets eaten?” Jack called, striding over from the direction of his office. He must have seen them congregating and come to investigate.

“Oh!” Ianto gasped, suddenly realising how stupid it was to stand around letting this new life-form become Myfanwy’s dinner. He waved his arms at her, advancing slowly across the bridge. “Shoo!”

The pterodactyl turned awkwardly, her wings beating at Ianto and her beak clattering in an attempt to scare him off. Ianto, however, was not about to be cowed. He took a decisive step forwards.

“Go on, off with you!”

With an indignant screech, Myfanwy took off, flipping herself over in the air and disappearing into the Hub’s shadows.

With the pterodactyl out of the way, they had a better view of the creature – presumably some sort of fish – in the pool below. Ianto, who was closest, knelt down on the walkway as it stopped swimming in frantic circles and began making lazy figure-eights. Jack came and crouched beside him.

“What is it?”

Jack reached into the shallow water and scooped the creature out into his palm. “I think – and I’m kind of going out on a limb, here – it’s a Babelfish.”

“A what?” Owen asked, frowning, as Toshiko straightened and hurried over to her workstation to enter ‘Babelfish’ into the database.

“A Babelfish. It – it basically translates for you, if you stick it in your ear,” Jack explained, sounding slightly embarrassed by the apparent stupidity of this statement. Ianto poked the Babelfish with one finger, his expression one of disgust.

“You put that in your ear?”

“You put what in your ear?” Gwen asked as she jogged up the steps. She had been in the archives, filing away the hard-copies of their latest reports. Jack stood and walked to the edge of the walkway, holding out his hand for her to look.

“Babelfish. To all intents and purposes, an organic translator,” Jack explained. Owen too came closer, reaching out with one hand to poke the Babelfish. Ianto climbed to his feet and went over to the coffee machine, grabbing a mug and quickly filling it with water.

“I’m sorry, but how does that even work …?” Owen asked, while Gwen bent to take a closer look at the Babelfish’s smooth, leech-like body.

“It says here that the Babelfish feeds on brain-wave energies,” Toshiko explained, reading from her screen. “It absorbs unconscious frequencies and excretes a matrix of conscious frequencies picked up from the speech-centres of the brain. Telepathically, of course.”

“Of course,” Owen said sarcastically, totally unconvinced. “Because feeding and excreting telepathically is perfectly logical. Honestly – this is some sort of joke! Nothing can live off brain-waves!”

Jack dropped the Babelfish into the mug of water Ianto held out to him, then placed his hands on his hips. “Not everything in the universe is logical. Look at Abaddon – he fed on the life-force of anyone in his shadow. You’re telling me that’s logical?”

“Well, no, but –”

“Well, then! What’s so illogical about the Babelfish?” Jack asked, treating Owen to one of his intense stares. The doctor looked away, grumbling under his breath.

“All right, fine. But how does it translate, then?”

“Apparently, the speech you hear decodes the brain-wave matrix that the Babelfish excretes,” Toshiko told him. She sounded not entirely convinced herself.

“This is quite possibly the oddest thing I’ve seen since I started working here,” Gwen said, finally tearing her eyes off the Babelfish, which was now quite happily performing loop-de-loops in Ianto’s mug.

“Oddest thing in the universe!” Jack grinned, walking over to look at Toshiko’s computer screen. “Where did we get all this stuff, anyway?”

“These notes are copies of an early twentieth century file,” Toshiko told him, pointing out the dates. “A humanoid alien from Betelgeuse VII came through the Rift – he seemed to think he had been caught in an exploding hyper-spatial field generator, which might have triggered Rift activity at his end … Initially he was arrested by the police. He seemed able to understand what people were saying, but when he spoke it was gibberish – they took him in, thinking he had escaped from a mental institution somewhere, and that’s where Torchwood stepped in.”

“I remember that guy,” Jack muttered, tapping the photograph on the screen. “Caught a glimpse of him when I was bringing a weevil in … didn’t bother to ask, though. I thought he might be a new team-member. Never saw him again …”

Toshiko nodded, scrolling down. “That makes sense – they managed to send him back. After he showed them the Babelfish, and they used it to understand one another.”

“So this isn’t the offspring of the original Babelfish?” Jack asked. “They haven’t been breeding in the water down here, or anything?”

“Not according to the files,” Toshiko replied. “As far as I can tell, they sent him back with everything he brought.”

“I’m sorry,” Owen said loudly before Jack could ask more questions. “But I just don’t believe that a fish – even a bizarre, telepathic alien fish – can translate brainwaves!”

“Oh,” Jack said. Before anyone could move, he had plucked the Babelfish out of the mug and grabbed Owen in a headlock.

“Jack! Jack, get off me! Don’t you dare! Don’t even think –” Owen yelled, but it was too late. Jack had already forced the slimy, wriggling creature into Owen’s ear. After a moment, when the Babelfish had completely disappeared but for the very tip of its tail, he released Owen, who stood and immediately began trying to remove it.

“Owen – sprichst du Deutsch?” Jack asked.

“Jack, you know I can’t speak German,” Owen replied irritably, still trying to pull the Babelfish from his ear. Jack grinned and held out a hand at Owen, like a circus ringmaster announcing his best act.

“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen – the Babelfish in action!”

“What?” Owen scowled, finally giving up on taking the fish out of his ear and instead putting his hands on his hips. Gwen laughed and whacked his arm.

“He was speaking German, you idiot!” she laughed. She turned to Jack. “I didn’t know you could speak German.”

Jack shrugged, grinning. “Ja, ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch – ich habe mal Zeit auf einem U-Boot verbracht.”

“What?” Gwen asked in confusion. Then her eyes widened in delight. “Wait a minute – let me have it, then he can say it again!”

She pawed ineffectually at Owen’s ear, trying to get a hold of the Babelfish with one hand while keeping Owen in place with a firm hand on his collar. Owen struggled, protesting loudly and trying to shake her off. Jack stepped between them, pushing Gwen back. “Now, now, children …”

“But Jack –”

“Leave the poor little guy alone,” Jack told Gwen firmly, reaching across to pluck the wriggling fish out of Owen’s ear and dropping it into Ianto’s mug once again. As soon as he turned his back, Gwen reached for the mug, but Ianto held it out of her reach.

“How would you feel if people were trying to put you in their ear all the time?” he asked, frowning, and Gwen backed off. Meanwhile, Jack was addressing Toshiko.

“Tosh, can you run a scan – see if we have any more unexpected visitors?”

“Already have, Jack,” Toshiko replied, peering at the results on her screen. “There’s nothing else.”

“OK, then, can you see when the Rift opened in here to drop the Babelfish off – and see if we can stop it from doing it again? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of having aliens dumped not only on our doorstep, but also in our living room …”

Toshiko nodded, her fingers flying over the keys as she began trawling through the recent Rift data her instruments had collected. Owen snatched the mug from Ianto while he wasn’t looking and glared at the Babelfish in the bottom. He was still twisting a finger into his ear, trying to rid himself of the unpleasant, slippery feeling the fish had left.

“I’m going to run tests on this slimy little thing,” he snapped. “I still say it can’t bloody well exist on brain-waves alone!”

Owen stalked off in the direction of the autopsy bay. Gwen opened her mouth to protest, but Jack touched her shoulder, shaking his head a fraction. She sighed and went to sit by Toshiko, reading her results over her shoulder.

“Well, then – looks like the excitement’s over,” Ianto muttered to himself as Jack sauntered back over to his office, leaving the glass door wide open so that he could listen for Owen or Toshiko calling out their results. Ianto looked up to see Myfanwy still flying around the water tower, looking distinctly put-out. He sighed and headed towards the giant freezers that held her food, hoping to placate her with an offering of fresh meat.

*

“So?” Jack asked when Owen finally emerged from the autopsy bay.

“This thing,” he replied, placing the mug down in front of Ianto and pointing at the Babelfish, “Is impossible. It can’t logically exist!”

“Well, logical or not, it’s here,” Gwen said, standing up and walking over to lean on the back of Ianto’s chair. “What are we going to do with it?”

“Send it back?” Owen suggested grumpily. He evidently still held a grudge against the strange little creature simply for being so bizarre.

“Why would we want to send it back?” Jack yelped. “This is the single most useful thing the Rift has spat out at us, and you want to go and get rid of it!”

“We can’t send it back, anyway,” Toshiko told them. “The Rift has already closed. We picked up a small opening early this morning, but it closed almost immediately.”

“Is it likely to happen again?” Jack asked, concerned for the Hub’s security. Toshiko shook her head.

“The opening barely registered – it must have been barely big enough to let the Babelfish through. We get these tiny openings all the time, throughout the city. They’re open for barely more than a couple of seconds. It’s extremely unlikely that they actually yield alien life or technology – they never have before, to our knowledge. Besides, if anything did come through, it would probably be harmless, like the Babelfish …”

“So we’re keeping it then?” Ianto asked, although he had a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer.

“We’re keeping it,” Jack said firmly.

“Right,” Ianto sighed, already resigned to the fact that he would be the one looking after it. “I’ll go and buy a fish tank.”

He headed towards the cog door, but before he could step through and close it behind him, Jack had caught up with him. Ianto stepped into the lift, trying to ignore the fact that Jack was blatantly following him. Once the lift doors had closed, Jack turned to him.

“Ianto, don’t sulk,” he wheedled, taking one of Ianto’s hands. “It’s not like looking after it will take up your whole day – it’ll just swim around and around in it’s tank. All you have to do is change the water every so often. I mean, you don’t even have to feed it!”

Ianto didn’t reply. Jack was right; taking care of the Babelfish would be a piece of cake, especially compared to looking after a pterodactyl. It was the principal of the thing, however, that bothered him. While Jack was away, he had become a fully-fledged member of the team – not just a tea-boy who did all the tidying up and odd-jobs that no one else could be bothered with, and almost single-handedly managed the archives. Now that the captain was back, however, he was being shunted back into his old role.

They reached ground level, and the lift doors opened smoothly. Ianto pulled his hand out of Jack’s and stepped out, still not speaking. He stalked into the Tourist Information Centre and ducked behind the desk, fumbling for money in the petty-cash tin.

“I’m going to walk into town – I could do with the exercise. Might take me an hour or so, though.”

“Ianto,” Jack said quietly as the Welshman straightened up, shoving a few notes into his pocket. “You do know why I’m not asking the others to do this, right?”

“Because looking after a fish is about all you think I’m capable of?” Ianto snapped, hurrying to the door and yanking it open. The captain followed him along the boardwalk, catching up with him as they entered the Plass.

“Look, I know it looks kind of like I’m pushing you aside, giving you all the jobs nobody else wants –” Jack began, but Ianto cut him off, his temper still seething.

“That’s because you are!”

“OK, so you get the crummy jobs. But, you know, you do them better than the rest of us could manage!” Jack replied, his voice rising to nearly a shout to match Ianto’s. The Welshman stopped, finally turning to face him.

“You’re telling me that no one else could look after a bloody Babelfish?” he snarled, folding his arms protectively across his chest. “You just said yourself that it’s so simple a three-year-old could manage it!”

“Oh, come on Ianto – think about it,” Jack said, evidently trying to subdue his temper. “Owen would manage to kill the poor thing within five minutes. And as for Tosh – well, she means well, but she’d get distracted by some piece of alien tech and forget about it and, three weeks later, we have one dead Babelfish, asphyxiated from lack of oxygen in its water, and one very apologetic Toshiko!”

“What about you, then?” Ianto asked, still not convinced at the fairness of Jack’s reasoning. “Or Gwen – she’s capable.”

“You saw how she was earlier – couldn’t wait to get the damn thing in her ear so she could have a play around with it. She means well, but she’d abuse the poor thing …”

“And you? You don’t have an excuse,” Ianto persisted, taking a step back when Jack tried to move closer. “Unless you’re going to tell me you have better things to do. You know, that’s what I’m really pissed about – the fact that you lot all think you’re so high-and-mighty, off chasing aliens – and I do as much of that as the rest of you, and I still have to feed Myfanwy, not to mention any other waifs and strays you take a fancy to, and sort out the archives – and on top of that, I’m still making everyone bloody coffee!”

Jack sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound good, I’ll admit …”

“No, it doesn’t, Jack. And I’ve had just about enough of it!” Ianto snapped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. He turned to go. “Right. I’d better get this fishtank.”

“Ianto, wait!” Jack called. Ianto stopped, but did not turn around. Jack caught his arm, trying to make him look around, but Ianto wouldn’t be moved. “Look … I don’t know what we’d do without you, Ianto. We don’t appreciate you enough, I know that, and I’m sorry. The thing is, Ianto, the rest of us … we get all tangled up in other things, and we forget – forget about looking after ourselves, half the time, which is why we so appreciate it when you call for pizza or Chinese off your own bat, or bring us a nice big mug of coffee just when we need it … I don’t know how we managed before you came along, Ianto, and I don’t think we could manage without you.”

“So, basically, you’re grateful for me being what – your personal babysitter?” Ianto asked incredulously, finally half-turning to give Jack a completely unimpressed look. Jack sighed and released Ianto’s arm.

“Fine, if you’re going to take it the wrong way …” Jack pouted. “I was just saying that you’re a very observant and very caring person – unlike the rest of us – but if you want to make that sound like a bad thing, be my guest.”

Ianto stared at him, fighting with a blush. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. Jack smiled gently, reaching out to take hold of Ianto’s shoulders.

“I’m not trying to … remove you from the team again, and I’m sorry if that’s what it feels like. And I’m sorry if it feels like you’re doing twice the work for half the thanks – but you really are the best man for the job …”

“Right,” Ianto said, shifting nervously from foot to foot and not quite looking Jack in the eye. Jack squeezed his shoulders gently, and Ianto forced himself to make eye-contact.

“No more sulking?”

“If you insist,” Ianto replied, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Jack grinned, leaning close to kiss Ianto’s cheek.

“Good,” Jack murmured, his lips ghosting across Ianto’s neck while his hands wandered under the Welshman’s jacket. Ianto pushed him back, unable to stop himself from smiling.

“Oi! Not in public, if you don’t mind,” he hissed, glancing around the Plass. Thankfully, it was deserted but for a few groups sitting outside Mermaid Quay’s restaurants, braving the chill sea-breeze in order to enjoy their cigarettes. He checked his watch. “I’d better get going, if I want to get to the shops before they close.”

“OK, then. Hurry back!” Jack ordered, turning his back and heading down onto the boardwalk.

“Try not to kill the fish while I’m away,” Ianto called after him, unable to resist teasing him.

“We’ll do our best!” Jack shouted over his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> “The Babelfish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe.” - This quote (featured in the Summary) is from [The Babelfish Argument](https://youtu.be/fmpP73-SHPQ) in _The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy_ (link leads to the Argument as it is presented in the TV programme).
> 
> I speak no German whatsoever, so the German began its existence as English translated through the Babelfish online translator! (Which seems to sadly have gone now, almost 10 years on.) Kind commenter [fry-addict](https://fry-addict.livejournal.com/) offered an improvement, which I've slotted in.
> 
> Translations:  
>  _sprichst du Deutsch_ = do you speak German?  
>  _Ja, ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch – ich habe mal Zeit auf einem U-Boot verbracht._ = Yes, I speak a little German - I spent time on a U-boat once.


End file.
